THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR: A PEOPLE'S HISTORY BY: DAVID GREEN (III)

INTRODUCTION

1337

There were these two powers, the one before the other … always injuring and harassing each other in all the ways they could. But at the last the English and Gascons … asked for favourable terms and [the Gascons] took an oath to never rise or rebel against the crown of France, and to recognise and affirm that the king of France was their sovereign lord and to remain his true and obedient subjects … This agreement was made … in the year fourteen hundred and fifty-three.[1]

Jean Chartier, Chronique de Charles VII

The world did not shift on its axis when the Hundred Years War ended in 1453. When Bordeaux fell to the forces of King Charles VII on 19 October, no one knew that the Hundred Years War was over. Indeed, no one knew that England and France had been fighting the Hundred Years War – the struggle was first described as such in 1855. But the 116 years between 1337, when Philippe VI, the first Valois king, confiscated Gascony from Edward III, and the duchy’s final capitulation, brought fundamental changes both to the kingdoms of England and France and to the lives of their people. The reach of government, the role of the monarch, the place of the Church, the relationships between rich and poor, noble and ignoble, and the very identities of both nations were refashioned by more than a century of war with the ‘ancient enemy’[2].

This book offers a fresh perspective on a period of vital, vibrant, brutal change. The crucible of war forged and reforged the English and French nations into something new; it redefined the loyalties and links of individuals to one another, their internal organisation, and their place in a widening world. The Hundred Years War brought about a revolution that fundamentally changed the character of military conduct and organisation. It led to the professionalisation of warfare, resulted in the decline of (chivalric) cavalry and the rise of infantry and artillery. The war forced the peasantry into a new role: as both victims and perpetrators of violence peasants were battered and brutalised by the conflict, but they also emerged stronger despite their terrible experience. The Church and clergy, too, were compelled to adapt to new circumstances, shaped as they were by political conflict and riven by disputes among the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but also galvanised by a period of intense spirituality. The war reshaped political and personal priorities, driving some individuals to remarkable lengths in search of a resolution to the struggle, whereas others fanned the flames of the conflict, drawn to it, lured by the promise of riches, booty and ransoms. The diverse experiences of occupation and the conditions endured by prisoners of war and women reflect many of these changes both in the wider population and in distinct groups brought into being by the grinding pressure of endemic warfare. Many were assaulted and abused, others treated with care and consideration.

This is not a narrative history of the Hundred Years War; rather it explores the impact of the conflict on those groups and individuals who fought in a struggle that redefined the peoples of England and France, and the nations in which they lived. The war has been a natural subject for writers and scholars since it began; indeed, historians, lawyers and chroniclers battled for supremacy on the page even while the armies of England and France fought bloodier battles at Crécy and Agincourt, before the walls of Orléans and amid the gun smoke of Castillon. The propaganda of the later Middle Ages would first give way to new origin myths centred on individuals such as Edward III, Charles V, the Black Prince, Bertrand du Guesclin, Henry V and Joan of Arc, and later to new historical ‘realities’ coloured by the experience of revolution and world war. In recent years the Hundred Years War has lost some of its political resonance but it has, instead, emerged at the centre of a wealth of scholarship. This book draws that scholarship together in a new way. It seeks to show the human cost of war within a framework of institutional change, and in the context of a struggle that propelled France and England into a new phase of development, perhaps into a new age.

It is usually said that the Hundred Years War finally came to a halt at the battle of Castillon (17 July 1453), although the surrender of Bordeaux three months later (on 19 October) offers a more pleasing symmetry. (The duchy of Gascony had been at the centre of Anglo-French hostilities since it first came under English control in 1152.) It is usually said that, in many ways, little changed thereafter. Edward IV would lead an army to France in 1475, and Henry VIII followed his example across the Channel to win his spurs in 1513. Calais, the last English bastion in France, did not fall until 1558. And even then England and France remained at each other’s throats in wars throughout Europe and across the globe until at least the Entente Cordiale of 1904. As Charles de Gaulle would say in 1962, ‘Our greatest hereditary enemy was not Germany, it was England. From the Hundred Years War to Fashoda, she hardly ceased to struggle against us … she is not naturally inclined to wish us well.’[3]

However, the wars that followed the fall of English Bordeaux differed in character and, until the Napoleonic era, in intensity from those that went before. Different, too, were the aspirations and objectives of the main protagonists. English (and British) monarchs may have continued to claim they were also rightful kings of France until 1801, by which time the Revolution had seen to it that there was no throne left for them to claim, but this was not a serious or realistic objective. More importantly, the political ambitions of both sides took on very different dimensions in the immediate aftermath of the Hundred Years War. In France, Valois power was finally free to extend throughout the ‘natural’ geographical area of the country. In England, by contrast, the humiliation in France led, after civil war, to a complete re-evaluation of the nation’s role and place in Europe and a widening world[4].

The Hundred Years War, then, ended in 1453. Where it began is a rather more vexed question. The roots of this ‘Tree of Battles’ were many, varied and complex. They can be traced to Gascony, Normandy and elsewhere in France; to England and Scotland. Once the conflict gathered momentum it drew energy from crises and struggles in the Iberian Peninsula and the empire, from the papacy, the Low Countries and Wales. As for when the war began the answer is even more uncertain. Should we date the beginning of the war perhaps in 1066, with the battle of Hastings and the unification of England and Normandy? Is 1152 a better date, when Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry Plantagenet, soon to be King Henry II of England, helping create the so-called Angevin Empire? In 1200, when King John agreed the treaty of Le Goulet with Philippe II (Philip Augustus), the political dynamic between England and France shifted markedly – the king of England acknowledged that his French lands were held as fiefs of the Capetians. In 1204 the French regained Normandy and Anjou – this, too, was deeply significant. Many have seen the origins of the war in 1259, when Henry III sealed the treaty of Paris with (St) Louis IX, became a peer of France and renounced his claim to much of his Angevin birthright. Perhaps the war truly began in 1294, when Philippe IV (r.1285–1314), ‘the Fair’, confiscated the duchy of Gascony from his recalcitrant vassal, Edward I, or in 1323 with the War of Saint-Sardos. It was in 1328, however, that matters altered radically. The death of Charles IV, the last Capetian king of France, gave the young Edward III a claim to the French throne, and it was this claim and the hostilities it generated that led Philippe VI, the first of the Valois line, to pronounce Gascony confiscate in 1337 when the Hundred Years War truly began.

Anglo-French relations, then, were acrimonious long before 1337 and they remained so long after 1453. The years between 1337 and 1453 were, however, highly distinctive and they marked an intense phase on that continuum. War dominated political agendas to an unprecedented degree and brought radical change to nations, governments, social and military institutions. Indeed, it left few if any aspects of life in England and France unchanged. War affected everyone, from kings to serfs, clergy and laity, men and women. The Hundred Years War refashioned whole nations, breaking and remaking them and their peoples.

Although the war did not begin until 1337, its origins can be found in the turbulent, shared histories of England and France reaching back to the eleventh century. When William the Bastard became William the Conqueror following the battle of Hastings, he established a new political paradigm in western Europe. The ramifications were not immediately apparent at his coronation in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066, but William had created what would prove a fundamentally unstable and ultimately untenable relationship between France and England. The duke of Normandy was now also king of England, and hence both a sovereign lord and a vassal at one and the same time. His political identity had become inherently contradictory. But for the best part of a century this incongruity seemed not to matter; the authority of the French royal dynasty – the Capetians – rarely extended far beyond Paris and the Ile de France, and Normandy remained all but autonomous, as it had been since first granted to the Viking leader Rollo in 911[5]. In the middle years of the twelfth century, however, tension began to grow. Through marriage, conquest, diplomacy and good fortune, the Anglo-Norman state swelled to become the Angevin Empire, with Anjou, Brittany and the vast duchy of Aquitaine appended to the cross-Channel realm, and with English power extending throughout the islands of Britain and Ireland. As a consequence, William’s descendant, Henry II (r.1154–89), wielded greater influence in France than his French overlord.

But the power of the French Crown was also growing at this time, and for all its size – indeed, because of its size – the Anglo-Norman Empire was unwieldy. Soon wracked by rebellion, instigated mainly by Henry’s wife Eleanor and their mutinous children, then undermined by Richard I’s absence on crusade and his later imprisonment, the empire was fractured – as it proved, terminally so – during the disastrous reign of King John (1199–1216). John should not be held wholly culpable for the loss of Normandy in 1204, nor for the failure of his international coalition to regain it at the battle of Bouvines (1214), but he should certainly shoulder a good deal of the blame for the collapse of the Angevin Empire. It had become clear that the tide was turning in 1200 when John agreed to the terms of the treaty of Le Goulet. By this John paid Philippe II ‘Augustus’ (r.1180–1223) homage and 20,000 marks in return for his lands in France. Although previous Capetian kings had claimed overlordship of those Norman and Angevin territories held by the English king, they had not dared ask Henry II or King Richard to pay homage (or pay such an enormous sum) for their French lordships. The treaty reflected a new balance of power between England and France: it was a clear statement of Philippe’s superiority and of his right to involve himself in the government of John’s continental territories[6].

Once that involvement began, it led swiftly to the French conquest of Normandy[7].The loss of the family patrimony was politically devastating to the English Crown and the impulse to regain the duchy as well as other territories in France would shape English royal policy for at least the next half-century. This urge to restore the Angevin Empire remained evident throughout the Hundred Years War. However, when it became clear to Henry III (r.1216–72) that he could not reclaim his ancestral lands by force and that what remained of his grandfather’s inheritance might soon be lost, he agreed the treaty of Paris (1259) with Louis IX (r.1226–70). This accord restored the tie of vassalage that had been broken when Philippe II had confiscated John’s fiefs. Henry offered to pay homage for Gascony in return for an acknowledgement of his rights to the duchy and he renounced English claims to various other ‘Angevin’ territories including Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Maine and Poitou. By this agreement, Henry formally became a peer of France and in so doing he accepted his position as a vassal of her king.

The treaty ensured a period of peace but it gave a new legal structure to the already contentious feudal relationship. This only fuelled Anglo-French hostilities in the long term: for one sovereign ruler to be the vassal of another flew in the face both of political realities and developing theories of kingship. The inherent incongruity of the relationship created in 1066 and refashioned in 1200 had now been placed within strict legal confines, which allowed little room for diplomatic manoeuvre. The demand that the king of England pay liege homage for Gascony proved extremely problematic. This created a more binding relationship than simple homage and it forced the English king to perform a humiliating ceremony. He was required to kneel before his ‘lord’, offer him his hands and promise allegiance for his lands. It was deeply problematic from an English perspective not only because it was a public declaration of personal inferiority but also because it placed major restrictions on a king’s military, political and diplomatic activities. By swearing liege homage he promised to provide military service to the French king as needed, to make no alliances with his lord’s enemies, and it meant that the judgments of the duke of Aquitaine’s courts remained subject to the whim of the Capetians. The treaty of Paris set England and France on paths that would collide in 1337[8].

As the overlord of the duke of Gascony, the king of France had a solemn responsibility and numerous advantageous political opportunities to involve himself in the affairs of the duchy. The role that he took most often was a judicial one, and because of the stipulations of the treaty of Paris the final arbiter of Gascon justice was no longer Plantagenet but Capetian. Appeals against the legal judgments of the king of England and his officials were now made with irritating regularity to the king of France. This consistent emphasis on French royal authority became increasingly irksome to Henry’s successor, Edward I (r.1272–1307). Appeals to Paris slowed down the business of government, clogged up administrative processes and generally interfered with fiscal activities. Such interference impinged directly on the authority of the English monarch even in his capacity as duke. The competence to oversee, guide and direct the legal process was a central component of medieval kingship, therefore to have this circumscribed and decisions overturned (even when they concerned a duchy overseas) struck a blow to the heart of royal power.

If this suggests that French kings precipitated the Hundred Years War by a niggling, gratuitous and entirely unnecessary show of strength, then it must also be recognised that the Plantagenets were just as willing to flex their muscles. Their actions, particularly those of Edward I in Scotland, were intensely provocative, and perhaps intentionally so. Having been asked to judge the respective merits of various claimants to the Scottish throne following the untimely death of Alexander III in 1286, Edward ruthlessly exploited the authority that this gave him. Indeed, Edward may have hoped his interference in Scottish affairs would goad a reaction so furious that it would give him an excuse to invade. This was deeply significant because the Auld Alliance, which Scotland and France contracted in 1295, tied the issue of Anglo-Scottish relations to the growing problem of Franco-Gascon (and by implication Anglo-French) hostilities. Edward does not seem to have understood the irony involved in ‘extending his overlordship into Scotland using the same techniques employed by Philip IV of France to strengthen his position in Edward’s duchy of Gascony’[9]. Furthermore, just as Gascony had been a thorn in the flesh of the French monarchy because it gave England a bridgehead across the Channel, so Scotland proved equally irritating to England since she provided France with a foothold on the northern border.

Edward’s first Scottish campaign began soon after, in 1296, and it formed part of an intense phase of military activity that laid some of the foundations for the Hundred Years War. War with France had already broken out, in 1294, with Philippe IV’s confiscation of the duchy of Gascony; there was a Welsh rising in 1294–95, and in 1297 Edward led an army to Flanders. These expeditions proved unproductive and ruinously expensive; military costs in the period from 1294 to 1298 may have reached £750,000[10]. As a result late medieval government became shaped by and subject to the demands of war; Edward’s reign laid the foundations for the English ‘war state’[11].

If, however, the scale of warfare was new, its cause was very familiar. The war with France centred on questions of sovereignty – in Gascony and also in the county of Ponthieu, which Eleanor of Castile (d.1290), Edward’s first wife, had inherited in 1279. On 27 October 1293 Philippe IV summoned Edward to his court to answer complaints that had been made against his officials in Gascony. The English king refused to answer the summons and Philippe took the opportunity, with some relish, to begin action formally to confiscate the duchy. Anglo-Gascon resources were spread thinly and French troops faced little opposition as they marched into Gascony and Ponthieu. The complete expulsion of the English from France seemed a distinct possibility – the Hundred Years War could have been over before it began. French attention, however, was soon distracted by a revolt in Flanders and a violent argument with the papacy. Consequently, a truce was agreed in 1297 and a full peace in May 1303. This re-established the status quo by restoring the confiscated territories to Edward in return for the payment of liege homage[12].

It was common practice to seal such agreements with marriages. The agreement of 1297 had been marked by the betrothal of Edward to his second wife, Margaret of France, Philippe’s sister, and the full peace would be secured with the union of Philippe’s daughter, Isabella, and Edward’s eldest son, the future Edward II. As it proved, far from easing tensions, this arrangement would only fuel Anglo-French aggression and make any long-term solution increasingly unlikely. After his accession and following his marriage to Isabella, Edward II (r.1307–27) paid homage, but not liege homage, to Philippe IV. The question of the precise relationship between the two monarchs arose repeatedly in the period between 1316 and 1322 when three French kings were crowned in quick succession. The ceremony should have been performed with each new ruler, but homage was only paid in 1320 and, again, it was not explicitly liege homage. A further development took place in 1312 when Isabella gave birth to the future Edward III. This did not cause any immediate concern across the Channel; nonetheless, it proved to be a deeply significant moment – if the Capetian line should fail, the next king of England now had a claim to the French throne[13].

Given the increasingly febrile atmosphere it is not surprising that war erupted again in the 1320s. The War of Saint-Sardos began in October 1323 following the foundation of a French bastide (a fortified town) in the Agenais on the borders of Gascony. A provocative act, certainly, if not an immediately hostile one, it led to a Gascon assault in which the town’s sergeant was executed. In response Charles IV (r.1322–28) declared the duchy confiscate and despatched an army. A truce, however, was arranged and in September 1325 Prince Edward (later Edward III) paid homage and a fine, which secured the return of much of the land that had been overrun. Nonetheless, it would take further military action in 1326–27 before all the captured territories were returned[14].

By this stage Edward II’s tenuous grip on political realities was reflected in his grip on political power, and he was soon to lose his throne and his life. Edward’s deposition in 1327, which Queen Isabella orchestrated, was not only significant in England but had considerable implications for the Hundred Years War[15]. Edward III acceded to the throne and soon began to fashion a new template for English monarchy, one distinguished by its chivalric and martial characteristics. It was distinctive from that evolving over the Channel and eventually it would be expressed in a claim to the French throne. One year later Charles IV, the last Capetian king, died, and to all the other issues that set France and England at each other’s throats was added a fundamental question regarding the French royal succession.

Although hostilities did not begin again for nearly ten years, 1 February 1328 marked a crucial point in the degeneration of Anglo-French relations; thereafter it became increasingly difficult to keep tensions in check. With the death of the last Capetian monarch there were three main contenders for the French throne (see Family Tree: Plantagenets, Capetions, and Valois). Edward III was the nearest male heir but his claim descended through his mother. Philippe de Valois and Philippe d’Evreux (Navarre) were related more distantly but in the male line. It is hardly surprising that an assembly of French nobles, secular and ecclesiastic, determined that the throne should pass to Philippe de Valois. The new king had served as regent since Charles IV’s death and enjoyed considerable support in the court and country. He was an experienced leader by comparison with the teenage Edward, who in 1328 governed England under his mother’s close supervision and that of her lover, Roger Mortimer. Unable to contest the decision, Edward III was forced to accept the situation; on 6 June 1329 he paid homage to Philippe at Amiens[16].

Conditions in England changed in the following year when the young Edward III staged a coup at Nottingham Castle and seized power from his mother and Mortimer. The new king’s priorities were clear: he wished to re-establish the power and prestige of the Crown. He determined to do so through war and found his first target north of the border. In 1332, in a manner foreshadowing policies adopted by both sides elsewhere in the Hundred Years War, King Edward helped revive the Scottish succession dispute and gave his support to a series of expeditions designed to unseat the young Scottish king, David II (r.1329–71), and replace him with the Anglophile Edward Balliol.

Edward’s intervention in Scotland had two main aims. The king sought to reverse the political humiliation of 1328 when Robert I (Robert Bruce) had compelled him to agree to the treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, the terms of which were so one-sided it became known as the ‘Shameful Peace’. In addition Edward wished to use a war with Scotland to strengthen his own fragile kingship by uniting the aristocracy in a national cause. Following the English victory at Halidon Hill (19 July 1333), the infant King David II was taken into exile in France. His presence there served only to inflame Anglo-French tensions. Thereafter, Philippe VI insisted that negotiations over Gascony would have to take the status of Scotland into consideration[17]. Later, the chronicler Henry Knighton would argue that when the war began, Philippe VI vowed to ‘destroy the king of England whether in so doing he made himself the richest or the poorest king in Christendom. And all that because King Edward had been at such pains to humiliate the Scots.’[18]

Royal status and the status of dependent territories (or what the kings of France and England wished to consider dependent territories, Gascony and Scotland respectively) therefore lay at the heart of the struggle that broke out in 1337. But these were not the only causes. There was also an economic dimension to the Hundred Years War. Gascony was not only of symbolic and political value, but it also generated huge amounts of money through the wine trade. Furthermore, it was home to a number of Atlantic ports which the French monarchy coveted. The wine trade in the south balanced the wool trade in the north where relations with Flanders, the main processing region for English wool, added a further, complicating dimension to Anglo-French relations. Flanders, like Brittany and Castile, provided another theatre in which to fight the Hundred Years War. French relations with the region were rarely easy and had been especially problematic since the defeat at Courtrai in July 1302[19]. This was a stain on French military honour not unlike that which the English suffered at the hands of the Scots at Bannockburn (1314).

As Anglo-French antagonism intensified, the papacy made a determined effort to prevent all-out war – the incentive of a joint crusade was used to keep Philippe VI and Edward III from each other’s throats. Then, in 1337, the duchy of Gascony was declared confiscate on Philippe’s orders because Edward was harbouring a renegade French nobleman, Robert d’Artois (1287–1342), in direct contravention of his vows of homage and duty to his overlord. Robert was seen throughout Europe as the man directly responsible for the war, although this was, in part, the result of an effective French propaganda campaign[20]. As the French king’s cousin and brother-in-law he had been favoured at court, but relations soured when his aunt’s claim to the county of Artois was preferred to his own. He came to England in 1334 where he lived quietly for two years. Edward III provided him with a number of castles and a pension in return for his agreement to fight in Scotland. However, in December 1336 the king refused to hand him over to French justice. Edward undoubtedly realised the implications of harbouring a man Philippe VI described as ‘our mortal enemy’. It was a provocative act, perhaps deliberately so – its consequences lasted more than a century[21].

Hostilities began in Gascony and the Channel Islands before the formal confiscation of the duchy and Ponthieu in May 1337. In general, however, the early years of the war saw few advances on either side. Edward III’s strategy centred on the construction of a major European alliance against the French, but this proved unwieldy and ineffective. It achieved very little and its exorbitant cost caused a political crisis in England. The only substantial military encounter took place at sea – a naval battle at Sluys, off the coast of Flanders. However, a deeply significant political development did take place in 1340 when Edward made a formal declaration of his claim to the French throne. In token of this he quartered the fleur-de-lys with the English leopards on the royal coat of arms. This was a major statement – the claim to the throne of France had become an integral part of the king’s own identity. Despite this, campaigning ended in late September 1340 when a nine-month truce was agreed at Esplechin[22].

In 1342 the struggle took on a new dimension when both sides intervened in the duchy of Brittany, seeking to influence the succession dispute between the houses of Montfort and Blois. Meanwhile the papacy continued to make what turned out to be futile efforts to negotiate a settlement. Consequently, in 1345 a new phase of the war began which marked the start of several decades of English military success. After the limited gains and almost unlimited expense of Edward III’s grand continental alliance, the king now adopted a very different approach. Three expeditionary forces, recruited mainly from within the king’s dominions, departed England and sailed for Gascony, Brittany and Flanders. All three saw some success and the raid led by Henry, earl (later duke) of Lancaster (c.1310–61), from Gascony was remarkably effective[23]. Then, in the following year, the king led perhaps 14,000 soldiers across the Channel. He launched a chevauchée (a wide-scale raid of deliberate devastation) through Normandy, then on towards Paris. However, faced with a numerically superior French army near the capital, the English retreated towards Calais. On 26 August 1346 the king came across a defensible site between the villages of Wadicourt and Crécy where he made his stand. What followed was a resounding English victory – Crécy was a savage battle, a devastating loss for Philippe VI, and the scene of thousands of French casualties.

The weary English army then made its way towards Calais, where a long siege began. Meanwhile with English attention elsewhere, David II of Scotland, who had regained his throne in 1341, took the opportunity to cross the border. However, in battle at Neville’s Cross near Durham in October 1346 he also was defeated and captured. The litany of English victories continued in May 1347: at La Roche-Derrien, Sir Thomas Dagworth overcame and captured Charles de Blois (1319–64), France’s preferred candidate for the duchy of Brittany[24].

Edward III celebrated this remarkable series of military successes by founding the Order of the Garter in 1348. However, the ghastly intervention of the Black Death put the celebrations on hold and prevented another major expedition to France until 1355. In France conditions changed in August 1350 with the death of Philippe VI and the accession of his son, Jean II ‘the Good’ (r. 1350–64). From the outset his reign proved to be anything but good; rather it was scarred by plague, war and revolt. He sought to unite the aristocracy, much as Edward had done, with the formation of a new chivalric order, the Company of the Star. Despite this, Jean faced considerable opposition from within the kingdom as well as from across the Channel. Charles ‘the Bad’ (1332–87), son of Philippe of Navarre, proved a particular problem. He tried to exploit Anglo-French divisions and his own claim to the throne to carve out an independent principality. Charles’s political chicanery eventually led to his imprisonment. Domestic problems such as this explain Jean’s apparent inactivity when the war resumed in earnest in 1355. The English launched two expeditions, the more prominent of which was the so-called grande chevauchée. This extra-ordinary campaign of calculated destruction progressed from Bordeaux, on the Atlantic coast of France, to Narbonne on the Mediterranean. Led by Edward III’s eldest son, Edward the Black Prince (1330–76), it cut a ruinous swathe through the country. No major battles were fought but hundreds of villages, small towns, fortifications and other settlements were destroyed. It was the example par excellence of the chevauchéestrategy[25].

In the following year the prince led a further expedition, penetrating the Valois heartlands, raiding and riding northwards: it was an insult to the authority of Jean II which he could not ignore. The French and Anglo-Gascon armies met in battle at Maupertuis near Poitiers on 19 September 1356. Although a closer-run affair than the encounter at Crécy ten years before, the outcome was the same and the implications far greater because Jean himself was taken captive. The profound political resonance of this French defeat greatly changed the character of the Hundred Years War. King Jean was not the only important captive taken that day; his young son, Philippe, later Philippe the Bold, duke of Burgundy (1342–1404), and 15 other key members of the French nobility were also taken prisoner[26].

The governmental vacuum this created threw France into confusion. The dauphin Charles, duke of Normandy (the future Charles V), aged only eighteen and politically inexperienced, sought to gain a vestige of control over a country wracked by defeat and increasingly divided both politically and socially. He summoned a meeting of the Estates General, which did nothing to help matters as its first act was to call into question the administration’s competence. Etienne Marcel, the prévôt des marchands, led theopposition which followers of the imprisoned Charles de Navarre soon joined. They demanded a complete reform of the government and a major reorganisation of the king’s council. The dauphin tried to defuse the situation but to no avail and King Jean, from his imprisonment, refused to countenance many of the demands. Tension between the parties rose. Then, in November 1357, Charles de Navarre escaped from captivity. If conditions in Paris had been feverish before, they were now explosive, and that tension erupted alongside a peasant revolt, the Jacquerie, which broke out on 28 May 1358. Taxation, increasing feudal dues, a stagnant grain market, casual violence perpetrated by soldiers and mercenaries and the indignity of the defeat at Poitiers all added to the political ferment – a torrent of hatred was unleashed against the nobility[27].

Although crushed swiftly and savagely, the revolt was an indication of the political dislocation the war had caused and the void that Jean II’s absence had left. Edward III sought to capitalise on this. With the kings of France and Scotland his captives, he was, seemingly, at the height of his power, and he exulted in this, revelling in a series of luxurious ceremonies and pageants. Direct political benefit, however, was more difficult to accrue. Edward made extortionate financial and territorial demands in the First and Second Treaties of London (January 1358, March 1359). When the French council refused these terms the king set sail with perhaps the largest English army ever deployed in the Hundred Years War – more troops had been used over the course of the siege of Calais but not concurrently. However, the campaign that marched on Reims ended in military failure. Poor weather, lack of provisions for men and animals alike and stalwart French defence forced the English to abandon attacks on both the coronation city and, later, the capital; terms for a truce were reached at Brétigny in May 1360. This provided Edward with a ransom of 3,000,000 écus for King Jean, major territorial concessions and the renunciation of Valois sovereignty over English lands in France. In return Edward offered to abandon his claim to the French throne. However, these ‘renunciation clauses’ were later transferred to a separate document to be ratified after the transfer of various lands and hostages. The ratification never took place[28].

Thus, for the time being, the war came to a halt. Edward III granted the duchy of Gascony and those newly acquired lands appended to it to his son the Black Prince, which the latter ruled from 1362. A cessation of Anglo-French hostilities did not, however, mean peace for France. The treaty of Brétigny left large numbers of mercenaries (the Free Companies) without gainful employment. In the absence of a paymaster they continued to ‘earn’ a profitable living by plundering the French countryside. Far more than a mere disruption, they constituted a truly formidable military force that defeated a French royal army at Brignais on 6 April 1362. Dealing with this mercenary threat became a priority for the new king of France, Charles V (r.1364–80), called ‘the Wise’[29].

Soon after Charles V’s accession, an English spy reported the new king’s objectives to Edward III. Charles intended to bide his time, negotiate the release of those hostages still in captivity following the treaty of Brétigny, build up his army and deal with the ongoing threat posed by Charles de Navarre. Only then would he seek to reconquer those lands surrendered in 1360[30]. First, however, Charles V had to put a stop to the ravages the mercenary companies were inflicting. The opportunity to do so came with the outbreak of a civil war in Castile between King Pedro, known as ‘the Cruel’ (r.1350–69), and his half-brother Enrique, ‘the Bastard’, of Trastamara (r.1369–79). Charles hoped that a change of ruler in Castile would put paid to the alliance Pedro had made with Edward III in 1362. Consequently, the mercenary commander and future constable of France, Bertrand du Guesclin (c.1320–80), was despatched to recruit an army from among the Free Companies and lead it to Castile in support of Enrique. This proved partially successful. Pedro was deposed but not eliminated. He fled to the sanctuary of the Black Prince’s court in Aquitaine. Negotiations followed as Pedro offered anything and everything in return for the support he needed to regain his throne.

The terms were finalised in the treaty of Libourne (23 September 1366). This placed the huge financial burden for a military expedition on the Black Prince’s shoulders. Pedro agreed to repay the colossal sum (more than £250,000) with interest and further territorial inducements. The army the prince and Sir John Chandos (d.1369) recruited consisted, in part, of some of those very soldiers who had recently fought under the Franco-Trastamaran colours to depose Pedro. Now they battled to reinstate him, defeating Enrique and du Guesclin at Nájera on 3 April 1367. Pedro was restored to the Castilian throne, albeit briefly. The victory, however, came at great cost to the Black Prince. The financial implications of the expedition were very considerable and Pedro was unable even to begin to repay his allies. It also cost the prince his health – it was in Spain that he contracted the illness, usually although uncertainly diagnosed as amoebic dysentery, which would eventually cut short his life[31].

It was, therefore, in very changed circumstances that Charles V and Bertrand du Guesclin engineered the reconquest of the principality of Aquitaine from 1369 onwards. The war took on new characteristics in this period, shaped as it was by the defensive impossibility of the English (Anglo-Gascon) position. The combination of a vastly extended border with Valois France and revolt from within meant that the principality could not be held. The war reopened in 1369 after Charles V summoned Prince Edward to Paris to answer certain charges brought by a coalition of Aquitainian nobles led by Jean, count of Armagnac (1311–73). Edward offered to appear before the French king but with the small proviso that he would come sword in hand and with an army at his back. It was a proud but empty boast. Its consequences were the swift and shameful loss of nearly all that the English had acquired since the war began. The Black Prince’s illness and incapacity and Edward III’s declining years left the command of English forces in less capable hands. The French refused to be brought to battle, and the chevauchées launched by commanders such as Sir Robert Knolles and John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster (1340–99), achieved little. The French and their allies were victorious at sea, notably in 1372 when a chiefly Castilian force (following Pedro’s final deposition and death in 1369) defeated an English flotilla commanded by the earl of Pembroke off the coast of La Rochelle. Thereafter, for much of the 1370s, the horrors of war were brought home to the English people in a series of devastating raids on the south coast. The English position seemed to be in (literally) terminal decline when in 1376 the Black Prince predeceased his father by a year. It was said that at this point ‘the hopes of the English utterly perished’[32]. From 1377 the defence of the English realm and its overseas dominions was left in the hands of Edward III’s grandson, Richard II (r.1377–99) – then only ten years old[33].

But the momentum of the French advance faltered in 1380 when both Charles the Wise and du Guesclin died – both were laid to rest in Saint-Denis, the one-time Breton mercenary not far from his ‘most Christian king’. As a result the minority government of Richard II faced a rather less potent regime across the Channel. Charles VI (r.1380–1422) was aged only eleven when he succeeded his great father. Seeking to fill the political space and gain control of the treasury, senior members of the royal family struggled for control until the king proclaimed himself of age in 1388. For three and a half years Charles then ruled effectively with the assistance of a group known as the Marmousets, which included the constable of France, Olivier V de Clisson (1336–1407), and the extraordinary Philippe de Mézières (c.1327–1405). Then, catastrophically, in August 1392, the king suffered the first manifestation of madness that would plague the remainder of his long reign and throw France into chaos. For some time it had appeared that the dangerous divisions within the French nobility, which the English had been able to exploit in the early stages of the war, had been healed. Navarre and Brittany no longer posed a threat to the Valois monarchy, and Flanders had been incorporated into the growing Burgundian patrimony. But as Charles VI struggled for control of his wits, so a new struggle began for control of the Crown (or, rather, its resources) between Louis d’Orléans (1372–1407), Philippe of Burgundy, and the queen, Isabeau of Bavaria (c.1370–1435). The feuds and vendettas that grew out of this struggle would escalate into civil war[34].

Matters were no more settled in England. The country had been wracked by the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, in which the young king had distinguished himself, and by the Appellant Crisis in 1386, in which he had not. These incidents marked a period of considerable turmoil and it was one in which political disputes were played out to a new extent in Parliament. The Good Parliament of 1376, which involved a sustained attack on perceived corruption at court, saw the introduction of the system of impeachment as well as the appointment of the first Speaker of the Commons. During the crises of the later 1380s the so-called Wonderful and Merciless Parliaments (1386, 1388) saw further attacks on the royal administration. By the 1390s, however, Richard II had regained much of his power and he used this to punish his enemies and pursue a peace policy, one that Charles VI’s government supported. This resulted in a truce sealed in 1396 and seemingly confirmed by a marriage between Richard and Isabella, Charles’s young daughter – she was six. (Richard’s first wife, Anne of Bohemia, had died in 1394.)[35]

In France, Charles’s madness led to growing political friction, while in England Richard’s actions against the former Lords Appellant (nobles so-called because they made an appeal of treason against a number of the king’s ministers) brought about his own downfall – he was deposed in 1399 by Henry Bolingbroke, son of the recently deceased John of Gaunt, who took the throne as Henry IV (r.1399–1413). The new Lancastrian dynasty in its turn faced successive revolts in England, mostly orchestrated by the Percy earls of Northumberland, and in Wales, conducted by Owain Glyn Dŵr. The Welsh revolt might have been even more serious given that it received some French support. However, by the time of Henry’s death a modicum of royal control had been re-established. This was not so in France. There the assassination in 1407 of Louis d’Orléans on the order of Jean the Fearless of Burgundy led to the outbreak of civil war. In 1410, fearing Burgundian ambitions and their consequences, the dukes of Berry, Brittany, and Orléans, and the counts of Alençon, Clermont, and Armagnac, formed a league against Jean the Fearless. Charles d’Orléans (1394–1465), the son of the murdered Louis, married Bonne d’Armagnac, and Charles’s father-in-law, Bernard VII d’Armagnac, became the nominal head of the family; for this reason the Orléanist allies were commonly called Armagnacs[36].

Both sides sought support from England – the Armagnacs even offered Henry IV full sovereignty in Gascony in return for an army of 4,000 men (the treaty of Bourges, 18 May 1412). As part of this agreement, Thomas of Lancaster, duke of Clarence (1387–1421), led an army that devastated much of western France south of the Loire. Soon after, Thomas was bought off following a brief reconciliation in the civil war, but peace did not last long. During this period Paris experienced a great deal of violence as both sides struggled for control of the capital. Much of this was recorded by an anonymous resident commonly called the Parisian Bourgeois, although he may have been a clergyman. Henry V (r.1413–22) succeeded his father and took full advantage of these chronic political divisions by launching a campaign in 1415. Like Edward III he sought to bolster a shaky regime in England by taking war to France. After capturing the port of Harfleur on 22 September he marched towards Calais, determined to demonstrate his enemy’s impotence by ransacking the northern coast. His army, however, wracked by disease and dysentery, was intercepted by a substantially greater French force on St Crispin’s Day near Agincourt on 25 October. What followed was a remarkable, almost miraculous victory for the English. For Henry, personally, it provided seemingly divine confirmation of the legitimacy of the Lancastrian claim to the thrones of both England and France. For the French, the chaos of Charles VI’s mind was reflected in confusion on the battlefield and division throughout his realm. Henry soon returned to begin the systematic conquest of Normandy, which he finally achieved in 1419. In the meantime the French civil war continued; Burgundy gained control of Paris, purging the capital of Armagnac adherents in the process[37].

It should have been clear to both sides in the civil war that England presented by far the greatest danger to France. Advances in Normandy and the threat Henry posed to Paris brought about another attempt at reconciliation between Armagnacs and Burgundians. This, however, proved utterly disastrous. In a meeting on the bridge at Montereau on 10 September 1419, in revenge for the killing of Louis d’Orléans more than a decade earlier, the dauphin’s entourage assassinated Jean the Fearless of Burgundy. This changed the political dynamic in France fundamentally. There would be no resolution to the civil war – it simply could not be contemplated. Henry V advanced, virtually unopposed, on Paris. For the sake of family honour and out of political necessity Burgundy, now led by Philippe the Good (1396–1467), made an alliance with England. Given the extent of combined Anglo-Burgundian power, Charles VI and Queen Isabeau had no option but to acquiesce to their terms: they sealed the most important treaty of the Hundred Years War on 21 May 1420. The treaty of Troyes did not seek to divide France: it did not partition the country as the agreement made at Brétigny had done sixty years before. Rather it aimed for a more complete resolution. Henry V became heir to the French throne; Charles VI would remain king with Henry as his regent, but when the occasionally lucid king finally died his successor would be the king of England. The dauphin Charles (later Charles VII) was disinherited, and to add a soupçon of legitimacy to the proceedings Henry married Charles’s daughter, Katherine. The treaty did not, however, seek to unite England and France: it created a Dual Monarchy; the countries would be governed separately and according to their own laws and customs, but by the same man[38].This, at least, was the arrangement agreed in 1420. In practice France did, again, become partitioned because the dauphin and the Armagnac faction refused to comply and established a separate jurisdiction in central and southern France, what became known as the kingdom of Bourges; while the north, including Paris, came under Anglo-Burgundian control[39].

Charles VI of France, known, kindly, as the Well-Beloved, died in October 1422, but his son-in-law did not succeed him. Two months earlier Henry had succumbed to an illness contracted while besieging Meaux. And so Henry VI, not yet a year old, became king of England and France. His regent across the Channel was his uncle, the very capable John, duke of Bedford (1389–1435), who maintained the English position extremely effectively for several years. The English, under Thomas, duke of Clarence, did suffer a reverse at Baugé in 1421, but this was overturned in a major Anglo-Burgundian victory against the dauphinist (Franco-Scottish) forces at Cravant on 31 July 1423. Bedford, in person, defeated another ‘French’ army at Verneuil (17 August 1424). Consequently, despite the loss of Henry V, the English position did not wither; indeed, it strengthened. By 1427 much of Maine and Anjou had been taken and the line of Anglo-Burgundian control driven south to the River Loire. There it halted. The English did not wish to cross the river, which would leave major French outposts behind them that could harbour troops capable of harassing them from the rear.

The most significant of these outposts was Orléans. In the autumn of 1428 Thomas, earl of Salisbury, laid siege to the town. Salisbury was killed in the early exchanges but the siege held and matters seemed extremely bleak for the Orléanais. On the point of capitulation the town was, however, relieved, in a manner that seemed almost wonderous. On 8 May 1429 the English abandoned the siege following the intervention of a peasant girl at the head of a French army. Joan of Arc’s arrival marked a major reversal for the English. Under her leadership English forces were defeated at Jargeau, Patay, and elsewhere. Joan then led the dauphin to Reims, deep in Burgundian territory, to have him crowned king as Charles VII on 17 July[40].

However, Joan’s actions did not begin an unstoppable tide of Valois success. Some of those territories she gained in 1429 were soon recovered by the Lancastrians, such as Maine in 1433–34, and, of course, despite an undoubted change of fortunes, Charles still did not control Paris. Henry VI was himself crowned there, albeit in a rather unsatisfactory ceremony, on 16 December 1431. Furthermore, Joan became a somewhat awkward ally soon after Charles’s coronation. Certainly, Charles made no great effort to ransom or rescue her after she fell into Burgundian hands at Compiègne in 1430. Sold first to the English and then handed over to the Church, Joan’s conviction of heresy posed a number of ‘presentational’ problems for Charles VII as a king crowned through the efforts of a condemned heretic. Nonetheless, her actions stemmed the English advance and gave huge momentum to the French response. The major barrier to a Valois advance northwards, however, still remained, in the form of England’s alliance with Burgundy. Despite disagreements over policy in the Low Countries, Philippe the Good remained unwilling to withdraw from the alliance. Indeed, he would not do so until the death of his close friend the duke of Bedford. It was only then and following the Congress of Arras in 1435 that Philippe ended the civil war by reneging (with papal dispensation) on his agreement with the English. In return he gained a number of strategically important towns along the Somme and was, somewhat scandalously, personally exempted from having to pay homage to the king. This was a clear indication of his political significance as well as his ambitions for an independent Burgundy[41].

Without Burgundian support the English position was hugely weakened. Dieppe and Harfleur fell almost immediately, in the winter of 1435–36, although the latter was recovered in 1440, and, most seriously, Paris capitulated in the following April. However, important towns such as Meaux, Creil, Pontoise and Mantes remained in English hands, and Philippe the Good’s attack on Calais failed. Although Burgundy had been a vital element in the construction of the English Dual Monarchy in France, the end of the alliance did not immediately result in disaster. Nonetheless, the position in Normandy became increasingly precarious, and French assaults began on Gascony. Perhaps the chief reason that the English were able to maintain a tenuous grip in France was that Charles VII’s own position was not entirely secure. In 1440 he faced the Praguerie, a major rebellion by elements of the French nobility, including the dauphin, Louis (later Louis XI). Named after recent civil unrest in Bohemia, the revolt aimed to place effective power in the hands of Jean d’Alençon, Charles de Bourbon and Jean IV d’Armagnac, the dauphin’s allies. Following some serious military action, the duke of Burgundy took a comfortable seat near the summit of the moral high ground from where he mediated a reconciliation. Charles VII emerged from the crisis relatively unscathed, but it was an indication that his position was far from impregnable[42].

Henry VI’s situation was far weaker, however. Hampered by a succession of poor harvests which resulted in severely reduced taxation, the king, increasingly desperate, sought a diplomatic resolution to the war. He finally managed to broker a truce at Tours in 1444 – the first real cessation to hostilities since 1417. By the terms of the agreement Henry VI was to marry Margaret of Anjou, Charles VII’s niece. Henry then suggested that as part of a permanent settlement he might renounce his claim to the French Crown in return for sovereign rule in Normandy. As evidence of his goodwill, in December 1445 he surrendered the county of Maine. It proved a disastrous decision – deeply divisive in England and, as far as the French were concerned, merely evidence that Henry would yield to pressure. That pressure was applied in earnest in 1449 when Charles VII launched the final attack on Normandy. By this point Charles had instituted the major military reforms that would secure his ultimate victory. In May 1445 he had created the royalordonnance. This laid the foundations for a permanent standing army. As part of this process the royal artillery was put on a professional footing under the command of the Bureau brothers, Jean and Gaspard. These reforms, instituted after the truce, may have been more concerned with addressing the mercenary problem in France than with defeating the enfeebled English. There was also the associated problem of unchecked military power wielded by the French nobility, which Charles needed to address[43].

Charles invaded Normandy in August 1449, following an ill-advised English raid on the Breton bastide of Fougères. The English defences swiftly crumbled in Normandy before Charles’s army in those places where they were maintained at all. Henry V had conquered the duchy in two years; Charles recovered it in barely half that time. His forces attacked on three fronts; Rouen surrendered on 4 November. Charles pushed on despite the winter, capturing Harfleur and Honfleur. English reinforcements were then crushed in battle at Formigny in 1450. Caen and Cherbourg fell in the summer of the same year. Soon after, attention returned to Gascony. It too fell, although after much more serious resistance. Support for England remained strong in the duchy, and although Bordeaux capitulated on 23 June it was soon retaken by the Gascons with the support of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury (1384×87–1453), who had been despatched from England. Old Talbot, ‘the English Achilles’, could not, however, hold out long. He died before the French guns at Castillon on 17 July 1453, and Bordeaux fell, once again, on 19 October. It marked the end of what we have agreed to call the Hundred Years War[44].

The war’s relative impact on England and France differed markedly. The expulsion of the English from France, with the exception of Calais, allowed for the expansion of Valois power within the ‘natural’ geographical area of France. Certain areas, notably Burgundy and Gascony, retained a clear regional identity. These would take some time to erase and for those areas to become wholly ‘French’ and brought entirely under royal control. The slow and uneven process by which victory had been achieved over England, and the mechanisms put in place in order to achieve that victory, however, established a new governmental system in France which provided the foundations for the Ancien Régime and a form of absolutist kingship that endured until the Revolution of 1789. In England, by contrast, the attempt to reforge the Angevin Empire (the Angevin chimera?), which had been at the heart of the Hundred Years War, failed utterly. After 1453 the geo-political focus of the nation shifted first to expansion within the British Isles and then to a new imperial mission in the New World. Before this could be contemplated, however, the humiliation of the Hundred Years War had to be assuaged – it was a bloody process and took the form of civil war. Although the Wars of the Roses did not begin in 1455 only because of the expulsion of England from the heartlands of Normandy and Gascony, there is no doubt that this was a major factor. The defeat at Castillon did not lead directly to the bloodbath at Towton in March 1461, but a meandering path certainly connected the two.

It is also the case that English society, like French, had become accustomed to war. Political and economic structures had been refashioned with the aim of protecting oneself and harming the enemy. Cultural mores had altered. Social structures had changed on account of war as well as that other ghastly manifestation of the ‘apocalyptic’ later Middle Ages – the Black Death. There is no doubt that the Hundred Years War, especially when accompanied by plague and famine, was an abominable time for many. The peasantry, particularly in France, suffered intolerably in this period. Yet the war, because of its all-consuming nature, served as a crucible in which many if not all groups were affected – their roles and situations substantially reforged through and by endemic warfare.

The following chapters will explore the impact of the war on the people of England and France. They will consider the changing roles of representative groups within the Three Orders that had comprised earlier medieval society – those who fought, prayed and worked. This book will also explore the impact of the war on those individuals drawn from a range of social backgrounds, who comprised distinct groups within the context of the struggle – such as prisoners of war, or who were influenced by the war in distinctive ways – such as women. Given the centrality of kingship to the Anglo-French war, the position and status of monarchs will also be questioned. Finally, the impact of the conflict on the peoples of England and France as a whole will be considered through a discussion of the ways in which the war fashioned new senses of national identity on both sides of the Channel.

In 1346 it started to become clear that this war would be different from those that had preceded it. The battle of Crécy marked a new high point in Anglo-French hostilities and revealed that the war would be fought according to a new and changing set of rules. Those who had previously comprised the core of French and English armies, the military aristocracy, would be changed fundamentally by the experience.

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[1] English Historical Documents, IV, 1327–1485, ed. A. R. Myers (London, 1969), 271.

[2] H. Martin, Histoire de France (1855). For a discussion of the Hundred Years War as a historiographical concept, see K. Fowler, The Age of Plantagenet and Valois(London, 1967), 13–14.

[3] M. G. A. Vale, The Ancient Enemy: England, France and Europe from the Angevins to the Tudors (London, 2007), ix.

[4] See further K. DeVries, ‘The Hundred Years Wars: Not One but Many’, The Hundred Years War, II: Different Vistas, ed. D. J. Kagay and L. J. A. Villalon (Leiden, 2008), 3–36.

[5] D. Bates, ‘The Rise and Fall of Normandy, c. 911–1204’, England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. D. Bates and A. Curry (London, 1994), 19–35.

[6] Treaty of Le Goulet (1200): Recueil des Actes de Philippe Augustus, ed. H.-F. Delaborde, 4 vols (Paris, 1916–79), II, 178–85; T. Rymer, Feodera, conventions, litterae etc, rev. ed. A. Clarke, F. Holbrooke and J. Coley, 4 vols in 7 parts (London, 1816–69), I, i, 75–6; P. Chaplais, ed., Diplomatic Documents, I, 1101–1272 (London, 1964), no. 9; A. Curry, The Hundred Years War (Houndmills, 2nd edn, 2003), 29; J. Bradbury, Philip Augustus, King of France, 1180–1223 (Harlow, 1998), 133–5.

[7] G. P. Cuttino, English Medieval Diplomacy (Bloomington, IN, 1985), 49–51.

[8] Treaty of Paris (1259): English Historical Documents, III, 1189–1327, ed. H. Rothwell (London, 1975), 376–9. See also W. M. Ormrod, ‘England, Normandy and the Beginnings of the Hundred Years War, 1259–1360’, England and Normandy, ed. Bates and Curry, 198; P. Chaplais, ‘The Making of the Treaty of Paris (1259) and the Royal Style’,EHR, 67 (1952), 235–53; E. Hallam and J. Everard, Capetian France, 987–1328 (Harlow, 2nd edn, 2001), 283, 342–4.

[9] F. Watson, ‘Settling the Stalemate: Edward I’s Peace in Scotland, 1303–1305’, Thirteenth-Century England, VI, ed. M. Prestwich, R. H. Britnell and R. Frame (Woodbridge, 1997), 128; M. Prestwich, Edward I (New Haven, CT, and London, 1997), 275.

[10] M. Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 1225–1360 (Oxford, 2005), 165–8.

[11] For further discussion of this in a wider context, see S. Gunn, ‘War and the Emergence of the State: Western Europe, 1350–1600’, European Warfare, 1350–1750, ed. F. Tallett and D. J. B. Trim (Cambridge, 2010), 50–73; R. G. Asch, ‘War and State Building’, ibid., 322–37 

[12] Curry, Hundred Years War, 35–7; J. R. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair(Princeton, NJ, 1980), 318–24; Prestwich, Edward I, 376–400.

[13] M. G. A. Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War: The Angevin Legacy, 1250–1340 (Oxford, 1996), 227–9.

[14] P. Chaplais, The War of Saint-Sardos (1323–1325): Gascon Correspondence and Diplomatic Documents (London, 1945).

[15] S. Phillips, Edward II (New Haven, CT, and London, 2010), 512–16, 522–50.

[16] W. M. Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven, CT, and London, 2011), 82–3; R. J. Knecht, The Valois: Kings of France 1328–1589 (London, 2007), 1–2, 24; C. Taylor, ‘The Salic Law and the Valois Succession to the French Crown’, French History, 15 (2001), 358–77; idem, ‘Edward III and the Plantagenet Claim to the French Throne’, The Age of Edward III, ed. J. Bothwell (York, 2001), 156–7.

[17] A. Ayton, ‘The English Army at Crécy’, The Battle of Crécy, 1346, ed. A. Ayton and P. Preston (Woodbridge, 2005), 200–29; C. J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327–1360 (Woodbridge, 2000), 27–76, esp. 28–33, 36, 54–5, 58–9, 63, 73–4; idem, ed., The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations(Woodbridge, 1999), 38.

[18] H. Knighton, Knighton’s Chronicle 1337–1396, ed. G. Martin (Oxford, 1995), 3. See also G. W. S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland(London, 1965), 369.

[19] M. Prestwich, ‘Why did Englishmen Fight in the Hundred Years War?’, Medieval History, 2 (1992), 63–4; P. Contamine, ‘La Guerre de Cent Ans en France: Une approche économique’, BIHR, 47 (1974), 125–49; E. B. Fryde, ‘Financial Resources of Edward III in the Netherlands, 1337–40, Pt. 2’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 45 (1967), 1,142–216; J. E. Ziegler, ‘Edward III and Low Country Finances: 1338–1340, with Particular Emphasis on the Dominant Position of Brabant’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, 61 (1983), 802–17; J. F. Verbruggen, ‘Flemish Urban Militias against the French Cavalry Armies in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, trans. K. DeVries,Journal of Medieval Military History, I, ed. B. S. Bachrach (Woodbridge, 2002), 145–69; idem, The Battle of the Golden Spurs: Courtrai, 11 July 1302, ed. K. DeVries, trans. D. R. Ferguson (Woodbridge, 2002).

[20] J. le Bel, Chronique, ed. J. Viard and E. Déprez, 2 vols (Paris, 1904), I, 119–20; J. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, I: Trial by Battle (London, 1990), 292.

[21] T. Wright, ed., Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, 2 vols (London, 1859–61), I, 1–25; M. G. A. Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in North-West Europe (Oxford, 2001), 213–18; Ormrod, Edward III, 189.

[22] On the significance of the English claim to the throne and the seriousness with which it was viewed, see E. Perroy, The Hundred Years War, trans W. B. Wells (London, 1951), 69, and for a contrary view J. le Patourel, ‘Edward III and the Kingdom of France’, History, 43 (1958), repr. in Rogers, The Wars of Edward III, 247–64. For further comment, see C. T. Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, c.1300–c.1450 (Cambridge, 1988), 7–12; Curry, Hundred Years War, 44–58. For the treaty of Esplechin, see Sumption, Trial by Battle, 358–9.

[23] K. A. Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster, 1310–1361 (London, 1969), 46–66.

[24] A. Grant, ‘Disaster at Neville’s Cross: The Scottish Point of View’, The Battle of Neville’s Cross, 1346, ed. D. Rollason and M. Prestwich (Stamford, 1998), 32–5; Sumption, Trial by Battle, 574–6.

[25] Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, 286–324.

[26] D. Green, The Battle of Poitiers, 1356 (Stroud, rev. edn, 2008), 38–69.

[27] D. J. Aiton, ‘“Shame on him who allows them to live”: The Jacquerie of 1358’, unpub. PhD thesis (University of Glasgow, 2007), esp. 97–147.

[28] Treaty of Brétigny-Calais (1360): BL Additional MS 32097 fol. 108v; MS Stowe 140ff., 50v–56; E. Cosneau, Les grands traités de la Guerre de Cent Ans (Paris, 1889), 33–68; Rymer, Foedera, III, i, 202–9; English Historical Documents, IV, 103; C. J. Rogers, ‘The Anglo-French Peace Negotiations of 1354–1360 Reconsidered’, Age of Edward III, ed. Bothwell, 193–214; Ormrod, Edward III, 397–413.

[29] The grant of the principality of Aquitaine (19 July 1362): TNA E30/1105; BL Cotton MS Nero D VI f.31; Rymer, Feodera, III, ii, 669. On the Free Companies, see K. Fowler, Medieval Mercenaries, I: The Great Companies (Oxford, 2001), 46–52; R. Delachenal, Charles V, 5 vols (Paris, 1909–31), III, 239ff.

[30] Knecht, Valois, 33.

[31] Treaty of Libourne (1366): Rymer, Foedera, III, ii, 799–807; C. A. González Paz, ‘The Role of Mercenary Troops in Spain in the Fourteenth Century: The Civil War’, Mercenaries and Paid Men: The Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. John France (Leiden, 2008), 331–43; P. E. Russell, The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955), 59–101; Clara Estow, Pedro the Cruel of Castile, 1350–1369 (Leiden, 1995), 232ff; L. J. A. Villalon, ‘Spanish Involvement in the Hundred Years War and the Battle of Nájera’, The Hundred Years War, I: A Wider Focus, ed. D. Kagay and L. J. A. Villalon (Leiden, 2005), 3–74

[32] T. Walsingham, The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, I, 1376–1394, ed. and trans. J. Taylor, W. R. Childs and L. Watkiss (Oxford, 2003), 37; D. Green, ‘Medicine and Masculinity: Thomas Walsingham and the Death of the Black Prince’, Journal of Medieval History, 35 (2009), 34–51.

[33] Delachenal, Charles V, IV, 408–18; V, 5–37; F. Autrand, Charles V, le sage (Paris, 1994), 568–612.

[34] J. B. Henneman, Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France under Charles V and Charles VI (Philadelphia, PA, 1996), 172–88.

[35] A. Curry, ‘War or Peace? Philippe de Mézières, Richard II and Anglo-French Diplomacy’, Philippe de Mézières and His Age: Piety and Politics in the Fourteenth Century, ed. R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and K. Petkov (Leiden, 2011), 295–320; N. Saul, Richard II (New Haven, CT, and London, 1997), 205–34.

[36] M. Bennett, Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 (Stroud, 1999), 170–91; R. C. Famiglietti, Royal Intrigue: Crisis at the Court of Charles VI, 1392–1420 (New York, 1986), 73–110; R. Vaughan, John the Fearless: The Growth of Burgundian Power(Woodbridge, new edn, 2002), 67–102; R. R. Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr(Oxford, 1995), 102–28.

[37] J. Barker, Conquest: The English Kingdom of France, 1417–1450 (London, 2009), 3–30; Allmand, Hundred Years War, 27–9.

[38] Treaty of Troyes (1420): Cosneau, Grands traités, 100–15; P. Chaplais, English Medieval Diplomatic Practice, Part One: Documents and Interpretations, 2 vols (London, 1982), II, 629–36.

[39] C. T. Allmand, Henry V (New Haven, CT, and London, 1997), 61–150.

[40] L. J. Taylor, The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc (New Haven, CT, and London, 2009), 56–60, 92–4; M. G. A. Vale, Charles VII (London, 1974), 56–7.

[41] R. Vaughan, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (Woodbridge, new edn, 2002),

98–107.

[42] Vale, Charles VII, 70–4, 79–84.

[43] B. Wolffe, Henry VI (New Haven, CT, and London, new edn, 2001), 184–214; R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI: The Exercise of Royal Authority, 1422–1461(London, 1981), 443–81; A. Corvisier, Histoire militaire de la France, 1: Des origines à 1715 (Paris, 1992), 201–5.

[44] M. Keen, ‘The End of the Hundred Years War: Lancastrian France and Lancastrian England’, Nobles, Knights and Men-at-Arms in the Middle Ages (London, 1996), 239–55; A. J. Pollard, John Talbot and the War in France, 1427–1453 (Barnsley, 2nd edn, 2005), 131–8.